alisa: i'm alisa parenti in washington, and you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your "first word news." we will take you live to the house of representatives, where the house passed a bill that would keep the government open for two weeks beyond friday's shutdown deadline. on a vote of 235-193, the bill passing after house speaker paul ryan squashed a rebellion among conservatives demanding a longer stopgap bill. the short-term measure now heads to the senate. that goes through december 22. minnesota senator al franken confirmed today he will resign in the coming weeks. more than half of his democratic colleagues, including several women, demanded he step down after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

a shooting at a new mexico high school left two students and the suspect dead today. schools were closed for the day. police have not released any details about the shooter, but confirmed the other two people killer did attend the aztec high school. president trump signed a proclamation on this, the 76th anniversary of the pearl harbor attack. the president was joined by six veterans at the white house toing, "our nation pauses remember pearl harbor, and the warriors that stood for america." global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: i'm emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, qualcomm's ceo opens up for the first time on the broadcom takeover. he dismisses a $105 billion bid as a potential lowball offer. bitcoin breaks another barrier, roaring past $16,000 for the first time. theas it rises, so do concerns. and america's ai addiction continues to hit home. we talk about alexa. our exclusive interview. first, our lede. qualcomm's ceo speaks for the first time publicly since broadcom's offer of $70 per share. he sat down with david rubenstein and weighed in on broadcom's offer. >> there is not much more i can say than what was in the press release, which essentially is that we didn't think the offer was in the ballpark of value and there is a lot of uncertainty or at least unknown timing related

to regulatory and -- if you look at our board, just speaking as one person, it's a pretty strong board. emily: for more, i want to bring in bloomberg's ian king. this is the first time we are hearing from steve mollenkopf personally. is this a negotiating tactic? ian: he is very careful to say, if we get enough value, but he has to say that on behalf of his company. emily: what do you think is the significance of the fact that he has personally said not in the ballpark? ian: he went on in that presentation to talk at length about the way his company is running, how it will get through all these issues that it has faced, and that its stock price is at a low point at the moment. emily: you have been covering the chip industry for years. what's your hunch on how this

plays out? ian: it depends on a number of variables. they talked about a dutch company they have been trying to buy. emily: and have been, for 14 months. caroline: if they can get that done then , that puts them in a much stronger position. if they could get some sense that some of these legal battles, say with apple, are coming to a conclusion in their favor, a much stronger position broadcom has. emily: what's the timeline for potentially closing the nxp deal when it has not closed for over a year? caroline: he said by the end of the year we are kind of hopeful, , but maybe early next year. again, if that happens, then that puts them in negotiation-land with nxp shareholders. the pressure is on him to close and pay more, which he also talked about today. he said there would be discussions if he found himself in that situation. emily: what about the situation with apple? that's only gotten more antagonistic.

do you expect a resolution there? caroline: it seems just when it seems just when they have uncovered every stone in the legal world to throw at each other, then they find something else and they sue each other for new patents they have found as recently as last week. it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. although the analysts and investors say apple has no incentive at all to not drag this on. emily: what does broadcom say? no backing down, right? ian: we think that these people are in a better position to take this whole company forward. it's a bold statement. mollenkopf said why would you do that, that is not a friendly maneuver or an approach we understand. it's not looking like a very conciliatory approach at this point. emily: the earnings yesterday were strong, but they do take a -- paint a view of the future, but don't put a timeline on when that future arrives when they , will see increased margins and all of that. explain. ian: the numbers were, as may

have been over the last few quarters for broadcom, much better than expectations, and they said they will get better as well. but they damped down a little bit of the enthusiasm. we are only going to grow 5% long-term. emily: so, what does long-term mean? ian: exactly. this has been their competing view of the semiconductor industry. we are a 20% growth industry over time. all these new opportunities, cars, 5g, the qualcomm view. they are saying, no, don't get carried away. this is about consolidation. this is about getting the most profitability out of what we are good at. emily: i know you will keep us posted on all the latest. ian king. thank you. another top story of the moment. we continue to track the price and the frenzy around bitcoin. bitcoin had one of the wildest sessions ever, crossing the $16,000 mark, just three days before cboe debuts futures on the cryptocurrency.

the rbs chair spoke to "bloomberg surveillance" about what is perceived as a bitcoin bubble. >> i'm afraid that this is irrational exuberance. this is, as greenspan's famous phrase -- he found the market kept on going up after he said it should stop. it is a very unusual market. it shows we are not in a normal, to weigh trading market. even in the biggest rises, you have some people trading in and out. we are in very unusual territory here. it's a great chart, tom, but i'm not sure that normal, rational market analysis can really illuminate this well. tom: you are the most qualified person in the world to talk about derivatives in wall street. you founded fsa, you made regulation work in the united kingdom. should cme and the cboe -- should the americans derivative

market make a formal market in this thing we are seeing in this chart right now? >> i think i would counsel them not to at this point, because i'm not quite sure that they know enough about what the underlying is, about the nature of the supply and demand of the underlying asset. so, i think it would be a very risky move in reputational terms for them to go in that direction now. >> there are futures. we're understanding the cftc are looking at stress tests and a -- and the limits and a lot of clearing before these contracts are given the green light. could futures put an end to bitcoin if it doesn't go well? >> i suppose it could, but i just don't know how you would price a future at this point. maybe there is someone smart enough to do it, but the normal way in which you would price of future i think would be very difficult to adapt to this instrument. >> how do you see blockchain developing?

one of your earlier points, if nothing happened with bitcoin the underlying technology could , be used in other ways. howard: i think blockchain is much more interesting. banks are a bit cautious about the security of it, but i do think that the idea of distributed ledger, which makes transactions and payment systems much cheaper and faster in real time, is a good one. blockchain, i think has got life in it. emily: that was rbs chairman howard davies. last month, autodesk announced it is restructuring its business to focus on cloud and subscription services. we will hear from the ceo next. and bloomberg technology is live streaming on twitter. check us out weekdays at 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: general electric announced plans to slash 12,000 jobs in its power business, or about 18% of its workforce. the job cuts total nearly 20,000 this year. the move is part of the new ceo's plan to eliminate $3.5 billion of expenses across the company by the end of the year. software firm autodesk recently announced an aggressive restructuring plan to prioritize its subscription services. it also cut more than 1000 jobs. while the company says this could streamline its business, the stock tumbled dramatically on the news. cory johnson is standing by with the ceo of autodesk.

cory: andrew anagnost joins us now from all the way across the street. i think autodesk is such an interesting company, both what the products do, the way you sell it, and the way you are changing the business. can you describe the markets that are most important to autodesk right now? andrew: there are several markets that are core to us. the architecture, engineering market. we are also a big player in the product design and manufacturing space. what's becoming a super important emerging market is construction. we have always been big in the a and e in aec. we are becoming big in the c. the whole industry is digitizing. cory: you see municipalities figuring out if you work in , procurement and design into the process, you will work a lot faster and have cheaper projects. andrew: it's even more than that. construction is industrializing.

construction processes are starting to look a lot more like manufacturing processes. you know how digital manufacturing processes are. the instructions have to be exact. cory: you announced big changes in the business model, particularly the move from maintenance to subscription. how that's maybe a little bumpier than you would have thought. the stock took a big hit last week. in context, you're still up about 72% for a two-year stretch, which is a pretty good run. andrew: we announced great results. we hit our goals. we exceeded a few. cory: 5% sales growth year over year. andrew: 25% returned revenue growth. we were going through the dip. we were negative for a while now , we have returned to revenue growth. we did exactly what we said we were going to do. i just think people expect us to do a little more. cory: why would a customer switch from maintenance to a subscription-based fee for your service, as opposed to abandoning it and going

somewhere else? andrew: you talk to these companies all the time. most of our customers are seeing companies like salesforce, workday, office 360. the way they buy software is subscription-based. they like that they can turn it off or on when they need it. most customers are saying, yeah, this is the way the software industry is going, so there is not a lot of resistance. maybe from the smallest customers, but not the big ones. cory: i talked to a lot of people, getting ready for today. what they thought about the call last week. one of the questions i kept hearing was about the timing of the restructuring. why do it now, and what does it have to do with your long-term 2020 free cash flow goals? andrew: there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there. cory: i am a big fan of conspiracy theories. andrew: there is that famous john f. kennedy quote, "the best time to fix your roof is when the sun is shining." that is exactly what we have been doing. we knew we needed to invest more strategically in digitizing the company and in particular, in construction, the money wasn't where we needed it.

we are going to invest every penny back into the company in the next six to 12 months. this is a reshuffling of where we are spending the money. cory: what does that mean for headcount? andrew: we will be as big a company a year from now as we were before the restructuring. cory: where do those resources have to be? andrew: we had a bunch of initiatives that weren't core to what we were trying to do, driving the subscription transition, digitizing the company, reimagining construction and manufacturing. we had projects that were not in line with that. we essentially took out entire projects, and we are shifting the money over to those things that are important. cory: there is concern over the subscription number. just how many customers are joining the subscription service. talk about what the story is there. andrew: that was the biggest

piece of turbulence from last week. we delivered a solid result on the core, which is really what matters. you can deliver the recurring revenue growth without the strength. when analysts are modeling this out you get down to a unit , number, revenue per subscriber, maintenance per subscriber. when those numbers come down, that starts to matter a lot more. andrew: here's the exciting thing, the revenue per subscriber on the subscriptions that matter is up 20% year-over-year. what they got spooked by, and it's natural, because it is a complex transition -- people wonder what is going on under the covers. we just said we are going to do fewer clouds subscriptions and those cloud subtractions aren't important to our two-year goal. they are small relative to our core. it is small revenue per customer. but they are going to be bigger 3, 4, 5 years out. they are small relative to the two-year goals. cory: product development, innovation, the kind of things you want to innovate around?

in terms of your investment? andrew: we will be investing a lot in reimagining how people do construction and manufacturing processes. you probably know this. construction is the lowest invested in i.t. right next to agriculture in the u.s. in europe, it's below agriculture, i think. this industry needs to be transformed. and it's investing crazy in digital technologies now. so, when you look forward, we are going to be helping our construction customers become manufacturers of buildings. that's an exciting opportunity. cory: everyone watching this right now can look out at the major cities, cranes everywhere, cranes all over downtown san francisco. andrew: on average, 30% to 40% of what you see on that site is wasted. cory: interesting. i appreciate your time. glad to have you talking with us, ceo of autodesk. back to you.

emily: thank you, cory johnson. coming up, at&t and the department of justice step inside the courtroom. what a federal judge had to say about the impending antitrust case. and a feature i want to bring to your attention. our interactive tv function. find it at tv on the bloomberg. watch us live. if you miss an interview, go back to it. you can send our producers a message, play along with the charts we show you on air. this is for bloomberg subscribers only. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: disney is tapping into the tech world to expand. giant oracle and the head of lumina will join the board on february

1. the expansion of the board coincides with talks disney is holding to buy the entertainment assets of 21st century fox. ceo bob iger is scheduled to retire in july, 2019, suggesting that directors will have to be vetting possible successors next year. at&t and the department of justice squaring off in court. a federal judge says the antitrust lawsuit will go to trial on march 19 of next year. the doj is trying to block and's $85 billion takeover -- of time warner, saying it would harm consumers with higher tv bills and fewer entertainment options. bloomberg intelligence's senior analyst for litigation joins us now. what happened in the courtroom today? >> i wasn't actually in the courtroom today, but i did get a pretty good rundown as to what went on. the judge did not pull any punches and said i'm setting , march 19 as the trial date. this is between what the company had requested and the department of justice had requested. it is quite a bit closer to the company's

date. to me it seems like an effort to try to do the best he can to work within their timeframe and merger agreement. emily: what happens between now and the trial start date? >> normally what would happen next is the companies would file an answer to the department of justice's complaint, but they jumped in and did that right away, so that's finished. most of what's going to go on between now and then is additional discovery, the collection of data, documents, deposition testimony of various people in the industry. it's remarkable department of justice might need to continue to do more discovery here when they've already been investigating for a year, but they have said there is more they think they need in order to go to trial on this case. of course, the companies themselves haven't really engaged in that kind of investigation at all and will be seeking documents from the department of justice, as well as possibly other third parties. emily: how many days is the trial likely to last? jennifer: the judge estimated about three weeks. i took a look at the last three trials in which the department

of justice was challenging a deal. the last one being about a year ago. it was the merger of two radioactive waste disposal companies. in that case, the trial lasted just a couple weeks. i've seen them last about four weeks, two weeks to four weeks. this judge estimated about three weeks, right down the middle. emily: is there a possibility this case could settle before it goes to trial? jennifer: settlement talks can be ongoing at any time in any litigation. they can occur in the middle of trial, the eve of trial, or right at the end of trial. i imagine the department of justice and the companies may talk a little bit, but it seems like they are at an impasse, and i'm not sure how that can be bridged. if the department of justice is looking for structural remedy, as in selling off assets like turner or directv, and the companies are only willing to engage in behavioral remedies, which would regulate their

conduct after they have merged, i don't see what the middle ground is there, and it doesn't look like a settlement can be reached. emily: jennifer, i understand you have closely looked at arguments on both sides. who has the better case? jennifer: my feeling still here is that the companies have the better case. i think the department of justice is sort of going against their own guidelines, going against -- i wouldn't call it precedent, because it is not technically precedent -- but going against the practice of both the department of justice and the federal trade commission for about the last 40 years in their treatment of article mergers and in their treatment of the procompetitive effects of those mergers, as well as the kind of remedies they enter. where vertical deals like this one, which is not combining competitors, have raised antitrust harms in the past, it's usually been remedied with behavioral conditions, like the companies have offered in this case. emily: so, does that lead you to believe this is politically motivated?

jennifer: you know, i think that is really just a difficult call to make. i just can't say. because there is validity and feasibility in the department of justice's arguments. a vertical deal can raise the kinds of harms that the department of justice is alleging here. and it really comes down to what the economic analysis looks like. we would really have to get into the weeds to understand that, and we don't know what they're economists have done and what those studies look like. what they have asked if whether there is a long-term profitability, whether it will be profitable in the long term for the company to withhold content from other distributors, even if they take a short-term hit by doing that? it's going to come down to that economic analysis and what the companies' documents say. emily: i know you will keep us updated, jennifer rie. thank you so much for breaking it all down. coming up, the holiday shopping season is underway as the fight for your living room heats up. we will talk to the brain behind amazon's alexa on its new key features.

check us out on the radio. listen on the bloomberg radio app and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> it is 12:30 here in hong kong. i have an update of the top stories. in chinand imports beat expectations last month. it rose 12.3%. while imports topped estimates with a 17.7% improvement. that left a trade surplus of more than $40 billion. chinese stocks headed for the biggest weekly advance in more than two months, as authorities want to stem weakening sentiment in the bond your get. with lenders to assess year and supply and demand. washington has dodged a

government shutdown for now, with congress passing a bill to fund agencies through december 22. some wanted to avoid giving any concessions to democrats. the bill now goes to donald -- president trump. on a lighter note, the traditional pizza of naples has won national recognition. unesco put the city of margherita and its pizza on the list as part of the history of humanity. global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. >> let's check on how the markets have been trading. it is a great session across asian equities. what had been a volatile week. eight sessions of losses, the longest losing streak in over

two years. but the last couple sessions have been positive. japan's nikkei index leading 1.1%. a revision to 2.5%, boosting the sentiment. export stocks getting a good boost on the fact we are seeing the yen weaker, down to 0.2%. new zealand finishing the session better by 0.8%. have a look at the bond space. there have been big moves from south korea. the yield on the 10 year up by over 12 basis points. the yield on the two-year by over 24 basis points. if we take a look at what is moving in the market, you can see these i.t. stocks leading gains by 1.4%. let's have a look at the stocks we are watching. tencent raising the overall hang seng index.

tencent said to be investing in yonghai superstores. we are counting down to the reopen in china at the top of the hour. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. in 2014, amazon introduced the echo, a new category of device designed around your voice. the echo and alexa were initially made available only to invited amazon prime members. that changed in june, 2015, when both the echo and alexa were introduced to the public. bringing ai into our living rooms and sparking competition between tech titans. we caught up with the vice president of amazon and head scientist of alexa to ask how many skills alexa will have in five years. >> the skills will continue to improve daily convenience as we know it. everything is changing in terms

of the behaviors of how we interact with alexa. you set your alarms and timers through alexa. you listen to your music through alexa. you control your smart devices through alexa. next, we will find that we are transforming from more natural transactions to more deep conversations. if you look at this, we have been working on what we call the alexa price competition, where the goal is to build social bonds. they can talk to you for 20 minutes in an engaging fashion. this is incredibly hard. even as a human at a party where you have to talk to a stranger, 20 minutes is a very hard barrier to beat. emily: are you focused then on making alexa more humanlike and more conversational? >> absolutely. we are focused on making alexa smarter every day and humanlike as well. from that perspective, we are looking into how alexa can understand many different types of contexts. a lot of the common contexts

that we as humans are able to do quite well is how we carry information from the previous turn. if i said what's the first album , from adele and then play it? then you know the reference is the first album from adele. similarly, context comes in various forms in terms of geographical and regional context. if you are saying, when are the spurs playing next, we mean spurs in the u.s., the san antonio spurs, whereas in the u.k., it will mean the soccer team, tottenham spurs. these are some ways we are making alexa smarter. this will just keep getting better and better. emily: do you think you will be able to figure out how to get alexa to understand when you are talking to her rather than when you are talking about her? >> absolutely. that's something we are also working on. in terms of differentiating when you are intending to speak to alexa.

you already see some of that happening when you say alexa in a different context, when it's not meant for the device to listen in. it may wake up because you said the same word, but then it will automatically shut the audio stream, knowing that you used the word in a different context and you didn't mean to intend "alexa." that's a hard problem for humans to differentiate in a conversation. what we are doing is personal context. alexa can differentiate who is speaking to her, whether it's you or your wife. when you play your playlist -- when you ask to play your playlist, it plays your playlist, rather than your wife's. or when you are looking to shop it knows you are authorized to , shop on alexa. it does not need to ask you for a pin. emily: what trends are you seeing in how customers are using this to shop, and what are you doing to encourage them to

shop more, aside from simply discounts? >> alexa is about daily use. as part of everything we are doing to improve daily convenience shopping is, of , course, an important aspect, but it's not the only aspect. one of the things is to reduce friction or to make interactions as seamless as possible with alexa. so, when we are seeing that happen very well, if you are trying to buy the daily consumables or in terms of, like, if you said, alexa, reorder batteries or order batteries, those are working very seamlessly. now, with devices like echo show, we are also making it possible for you to look at what you are buying. if you say, alexa, buy a blue shirt, you can see multiple options that are available, and select by just voice, which makes it

seamless to buy things and making it easier when you are looking at stuff that needs to be on the screen, for you to make the decision. emily: i'm curious about privacy. what information is alexa collecting and keeping and then allowing developers to access? >> privacy is, first of all, very important to us. we are very transparent with our customers. in terms of, i will start with, first, if you look at how the interactions happen with alexa, alexa only listens for the wake word on the device. nothing else. it's looking for that particular snippet of what you said with sounds like alexa. only when it's confident in the -- confident an awake word was spoken, then it starts streaming to the cloud. then you see clear visual indicators. the light ring comes on.

on another the light bar comes , on on the echo show, which makes it very transparent. we've also made clear that customers can go to their application, the companion application on your smart phone or through the web interface, and look at every utterance you have spoken to alexa that has been recorded in our cloud services. and you can choose to delete them or delete all of them as an option for you. the reason that audio data is collected is for making our service is better for you, the customers. emily: i'm curious about partnerships. you have a partnership with microsoft. what can you tell us about the potential for more partnerships? when we spoke to someone who also works on alexa, she said anything is possible when it comes to a partnership with apple or even google, for example. >> we are very open to partnering. we know that our customers will want different choices.

if you look at our partnership with microsoft, we are making it easy for microsoft customers who use cortana to talk to alexa and vice versa. we are very open to this kind of partnership, because we want the best experience for our customers. emily: how do you view the competitive landscape? some people have rave reviews about google home. the homepod from apple is coming out next year. it's getting more crowded. >> i think it's great that so many people and companies are interested in this space. i think that's great for our customers. but at amazon, we are very customer-centric and we work back from our customer needs. we have been privileged to have millions and millions of customers using alexa every day. that has given us clear needs that we need to solve for our customers, so we are focused on that. i would also point out that we are essentially a voice-first

interaction paradigm, and that's where our focus is. our mission is to get alexa everywhere, in homes, in cars, on the go, and now even in the workplace. emily: you did just announce alexa for business. what do you think is the potential for alexa in a work context? >> the potential in the workplace is huge. if you think about a simple task like, how many steps you do to start a meeting, how many times you fumble on your conference phones, it's quite a lot. now you can just say, "alexa, start my meeting," and you are connected with everybody who is supposed to be on the conference. that's just a simple example, but even in terms of through the ability to add, new skills, you can learn new skills for the workplace, where you can order your office supplies. you can order a new printer cartridge, for instance.

everything is possible. i think the workplace -- just like if you look at the daily convenience, workplace is an important part, where you spend a huge amount of hours. if every step we could make easier and seamless, i think the adoption for alexa and how much it can improve daily convenience for our customers will just keep getting better. emily: and how many scientists do you have working on alexa now? >> [laughter] so, we have several hundred scientists working on alexa and i think we look at it more from the perspective that, we have so many important challenges to solve and it is still very early in the space of conversational ai. as i mentioned with initiatives like alexa prize, the potential impact of conversational ai and ai in general is going to be massive. we want to train more scientists. one of the things we are doing is to make sure we can partner

with academia to add more interest. students, especially people going for graduate studies. we can have more scientists who want to work in this area. emily: i can't let you go without asking about hq2. what's the likelihood that it will be in boston, where you are? >> i wish i could tell you that, but i'm not the right person for that. i have no additional information. emily: the mystery will go on about hq2. amazon vice president and head scientist at alexa rohit prasad. , still ahead, a jakarta-based company has its eyes on an ipo. our exclusive with the ceo and how he is spending off competition. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: facing growing competition from grab and uber in southeast asia. its ceo is not concerned. he says softbank's investment in uber doesn't matter right now. he declared 2018 as the year his company's payment platform will take off. bloomberg spoke with him exclusively from the year ahead is a summit in jakarta and asked about the competition. >> i think it is one of the most epic and innovating battles in southeast asia. they are both incredible companies for us to compete with. it's an honor to compete with them, the best technology in the space of ride hailing and the largest regional juggernaut with the most amount of funding. it's an incredible challenge to have for go-jek and a big reason why go-jek got to where it is today is because we have been pushed to our limits. we have to hyper innovate in order to adapt.

we came out on top in indonesia as a result of that competition. the urge and hunger to innovate. >> you mentioned they are encroaching to a lot of your market share. as well as the services you are providing. does it force go-jek itself to change its strategy? >> no, i think our strategy was designed to be resilient against giants. our entire product strategy, our competitive strategy is designed about flexibility, hyper diversification, and mitigating risk. because we have so many different verticals that interrelate with each other, it's very hard to deal with this animal called go-jek. you think you are competing with ride hailing, but actually you are competing with us on the user that uses food and ride-hailing. you think you are competing on food, then you realize, wait a minute, this is a digital wallet player that is leveraging that in order to further reinforce its food and transport business.

we are a very difficult animal to get. as a result of that it's a , little bit of that business jiu-jitsu we have. that's how we survive and come up on top again some of the largest companies in the world. yvonne: your payment system, you said, is going to grow aggressively. what are the plans for 2018, given the fact it is becoming a crowded and competitive market? a lot of money is diving into this right now. >> we are actually the only large tech player in indonesia that has an e-money license at that scale that is a pure tech player, or one of the few. the rest of our large players in indonesia don't yet have an e-money license. that is a good advantage in terms of having lead time to further expand. we are ahead of the curve a lot, but obviously competition will come in and we are fully expecting it and we are embracing competition, because that is what makes our product

great. i think 2018 is when go-pay acceptance travels outside of our ecosystem and starts being accepted in a variety of off-line establishments and a variety of online establishments. so, you will see 2018 as the year of partnership. there is a very long queue of partners that are trying to integrate right now. yvonne: what do you make of the investment softbank has made in uber? could that lead to more consolidation in southeast asia? >> for us, it is extremely important to have the integrity to pursue our mission. -- pursue our product vision. that's the only way we will be two steps ahead, by going to our own drum. we have always been the underdog in terms of funding and resource, and we still come out on top, so it's not about how much funding you have. it's about how hungry you are to create exceptional product experiences.

emily: that was yvonne man with go-jek's ceo. coming up, the seedy underbelly of silicon valley's holiday parties in the midst of a wave of sexual misconduct allegations in tech. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: another woman has come forward, accusing a venture capitalist of sexual harassment. the author and entrepreneur is the to go on the record since first the report last week. she says he aggressively kissed her and made unwanted advances after a charity event. the attorney has denied the allegations. pishevar is involved in a suit. he says they orchestrated a smear campaign against him. definers asked a judge to dismiss the complaint. pishevar's attorneys have subpoenaed and uber employee to

testify as a witness. they alleged he groped someone at a party. amidst this wave of allegations of sexual misconduct in silicon valley, a long-standing tech tradition is being scrutinized. tech firms are known for hiring models to run their trade booths to be greeters and such at trade conferences and shows, but this year those requests are changing and in a dubious way. tech companies all over the valley are quietly paying $50 to $200 per hour for attractive models to chat up attendees, making them sign nondisclosure agreements and even having them pretend to be friends with employees. this is happening in record numbers, according to local modeling agencies, and it's all coming out against a backdrop of a wave of sexual assault and harassment allegations in silicon valley and beyond. does silicon valley just not get it? sarah frier has been covering this story for us. a fantastic piece out by you today. disturbing, to say the least. infuriating, as well. what's happening here?

sarah: companies are trying to retain these engineers that are so difficult to recruit that are mostly men, and they are trying to add a little bit of excitement to their holiday parties by employing models to chat up their employees. and this has been going on for quite a while. like you said, there is a long-standing relationship between models and tech, in terms of the height cycle, the product launches. what has changed, this year more than ever, there is this behind the scenes modeling. it's not that accepted to be so out there about using models as booth space, for example. but if you secretly hire them and tell them not to tell your employees that they were paid, then it can make for a great party. emily: and these models are, what, checking coats? or they are just mingling? what are they doing? >> say you wanted to have a 1920's themed party. he would hire a bunch of models

-- you would hire a bunch of models to dress in flapper attire. this is different. this is models pretending they are guests and saying, if you were to come up to me at the party and say, what team are you on, i would say i'm a friend of a friend or i heard about the party and decided to come along. they are not supposed to say they are hired to be there. emily: you are saying this is happening at facebook and google-sized companies. is this happening at facebook and google? sarah: i pursued this story based on a tip about a party for one of those companies. facebook told me that when it hires models, it's not for this kind of atmosphere modeling. they have jobs like hostessing, serving. emily: does that make it any better? sarah: well, it depends who you talk to. these companies are throwing events, not just for their own employees, but also at trade shows. this isn't in the story, but i was speaking with modeling agencies that are getting ready to staff up parties at ces.

sometimes companies doing ces parties hire many, many more models than they would for an employee party, because that's the part where you are trying to impress clients, vendors, sell products. that gets you more in the hollywood line of work. i talked to one atmosphere model who has gone to these parties and has also in her past done movie premieres, for example. emily: atmosphere models, that is a new term, i guess. did you coin that? no, i learned about that in the course of this reporting. great piece, thank you for sharing with us. oft does it for this edition bloomberg technology. this is bloomberg. ♪

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